Snowbirds

By Noreen O’Brien, special correspondent to Marine Parts Express

Most of us readily recognize the ubiquitous snowbird, or Dark-eyed Junco (as birders know them). Juncos, mostly short-distance migrants, arrive in Maine from parts north as early as mid-August (some do nest here), but virtually all are in place in time for the first snowfall, hence the pet name for the birds.

A well-studied species, juncos live across all of North America and down to northern Mexico, with a number of different races within the two species—Dark-eyed and Yellow-eyed—that are scattered throughout their range. The most likely race of the Dark-eyed Junco we see here in Maine is the Slate-colored.

This small, but plump bird, with its pink bill, overall slate gray color (females are browner), white belly and white outer tail feathers that flash when the bird takes flight, is actually a sparrow. As such, they are ground feeders particularly fond of the small seeds of weedy shrubs, bits found in the leaf litter or on lawns, and commercial seed, such as millet, rather than sunflower seeds that spill out of birdfeeders.

Juncos tend to scratch the ground’s surface in search of food, hopping forward and kicking in a backward motion. Watch these birds closely. Typically, the more birds in the flock, the less frequently the individuals look up from their feeding. There is safety in numbers (one of the values to birds flocking), because it reduces stress to individual birds as they “relax” a bit while they eat without having to be constantly looking over a shoulder for what might make a meal of them.

Juncos appear to be a favorite food of Sharp-shinned Hawks. An impressive predator that will actually take a Mourning Dove, a bird approximately the same size as the hawk. Juncos also can fall prey to owls and shrikes. However, the main predator of the junco, particularly those around bird feeding stations, appears to be cats, both feral and domestic. According to one individual from California, a flock of 35 juncos at a feeder “lost one bird daily until two cats and one shrike were shot, whereupon mortality ceased.” Not surprisingly, it is unclear who shot the cats and the shrike.

For fluid intake, juncos drink from small streams, sip from moisture on vegetation or eat snow. Like their cousins the American Tree Sparrow, juncos will bathe in light, fluffy, “dry” snow, similar to the way some birds take a dust bath. The birds dip head first toward the ground flapping their wings and collecting snow to toss over their bodies, and then they preen individual feathers to keep them clean. To clean their bill, they will swipe first one side of the bill then the other from the base to the tip on a branch. They perform this bill-swiping frequently, so do keep on the lookout for this action.

For nighttime roosting, juncos prefer conifer, cedar trees or bushes to remain out of the cold winds. Often, they will snuggle into the bushes around the front of our homes for warmth during cold and snowy nights. When no such shrub is available, these birds hunker down on the ground under dried leaves, at the base of tall grasses or in brush piles—another good reason to maintain at least one year-round brush pile in a corner of your yard.

Meanwhile, it is likely that these birds are helped through the winter by seed that falls to the ground out of bird feeders. Studies show that northern wintering populations of juncos probably suffer from starvation during harsh winters with lots of snow cover. With this in mind, when shoveling the walkway, remember to shovel an area at the base of the feeders and spread fresh mixed seed for these birds, as well as for the cardinals, other sparrows, Mourning Doves and other ground feeders.

Perhaps the junco is not as brilliant as the cardinal is against the backdrop of snow, but juncos do add a measure of cheer and a flurry of activity out there on a cold winter’s day. And those white outer tail feathers flash like a piece of ribbon as the birds flutter hither and thither around the yard, adding yet another spot of cheer out our windows. I encourage you to offer their favorite food of mixed seeds, which is rather inexpensive, to attract them to your yard. And, both sexes sing—even in winter. Listen for a musical trill on one pitch, and enjoy the snowbirds.

All of us here at Marine Parts Express “overwinter” here  in Maine, but many of our customers are true snowbirds and skip down to more southern climes. We ship their parts directly to them and we are happy to ship worldwide. For all your marine engine parts needs, call us toll free at 877.621.2628, or outside the U.S., 207.882.6165.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions for topics for our blog or newsletter? Send them to info@marinepartsexpress.com.

Marine Parts Express is a division of Water Resources, Inc., a privately held Maine Corporation

Birds in Winter

By Noreen O’Brien, special correspondent to Marine Parts Express

Birds are of a marvelous design, just like everything else in the natural world, and have ways of keeping balance in their lives, even during the coldest temperatures of the shortest days of the year. To survive, most birds must maintain a body temperature of about 104 degrees Fahrenheit. To maintain that temperature in the cold of winter, they employ a variety of strategies.

Food being the primary source of energy, and the available winter hours for them to feed being fewer than the hours of sleep, birds must eat almost constantly just to survive. This is a good reason to include a high energy food like raw beef suet at your backyard feeding station throughout the winter months. They need enough daily food intake to draw from stores that will fuel heat created by their own bodies during the nighttime.

Bird feathers have tiny muscles at their base, making it possible to fluff them, thereby trapping an insulating layer of air between their feathers and skin. Do you use a down parka? If you bend over, you’ll note the woosh of warm air trapped under the zipped parka when it escapes under your chin. Same premise holds in the case of birds, but it’s built-in for them. Like us, birds also shiver when they’re cold, as a kind of exercise, which turns the body’s stored fat into heat.

As can sometimes be seen on a cold, sunny day, a bird may sit with its back to the sun, head turned toward its back, face tucked into the plumage of its shoulder. Water birds such as ducks floating on the water’s surface will do this, as well. Such a position decreases the total heat-dissipating area of its body, but it also covers bare surfaces that lose heat, such as facial skin, naked combs or wattles.

Shorebirds, gulls, and waders may be seen standing on one leg on rocks or on the beach, head tucked into a shoulder, body facing into the wind—the other leg is tucked up close to its belly. Birds can control the temperature of their legs and feet separately from their bodies by constricting blood flow to these extremities, thereby reducing heat loss. In addition, their legs and feet are covered with specialized scales that minimize heat loss, also allowing them to conserve heat for the rest of their body.

Birds of open areas have their strategies, too. Wind velocity is greatly diminished at ground level. Birds such as sparrows or larks will scrunch up together, close to the ground, sometimes making a bit of an igloo out of snow or a grass tussock, or by scratching a shallow hollow in the ground’s surface.

To fully protect itself from the cold temperatures, wind, and precipitation through the night, a bird would do well to have a solid wall of cover surrounding it. The more enclosed the bird is, the less heat escapes into the air around it. Most frequently, songbirds roost alone, however, on extremely cold and bad weather nights birds will congregate in huddles, sometimes with groups of different species, but mostly of the same. A British ditty describes this, “When tom-tits cluster, soon it will bluster.”

A collection of Brown Creepers might cling to the bark of a tree trunk in a huddled mass, bodies overlapping, heads inward and tails sticking out. Black-Capped Chickadees and Tufted Titmice generally sleep alone, perhaps snuggled into a bough of a conifer, but on a cold night, these birds may gather in a huddle inside an old woodpecker hole, an old nest of another species, or even a nest box.

The Yellow-Rumped warbler, a hardy warbler that may be found here along the northeastern coast even in winter, is not a colonial or a cavity nester. However, these warblers have been known to seek out others of their species and hunker down in an old nest for added warmth and protection from the harsh elements.

Maine writer Bernd Heinrich released a report not too long ago of a study he made on the wee four-inch kinglets. He spent many cold Maine nights following the birds until he found what he was looking for: kinglets roosting together huddled for warmth and survival.

There is a downside to some of these strategies birds use. Sometimes, when cleaning nest boxes in early spring, carcasses of birds are found inside them. The birds died over the winter from the cold, suffocation from the weight of layered birds with the top ones dying from exposure and the bottom birds too weak to work up through the pile, or starvation.

Still, huddling must work for the birds more often than not or they would not be using such a strategy to survive a cold winter’s night. On cold late afternoons, watch nest boxes for birds like chickadees and nuthatches, and even the occasional woodpecker, entering for the night. Also, look for juncos, sparrows and other small birds roosting in the shrubbery around the house. Better still, hang boxes and plant shrubs next spring with the birds in mind. They need all the help they can get surviving these long Maine winters.

Till next …

Noreen

While we up here in chilly New England have battened down the hatches getting ready for the cold, it doesn’t stop us from being able to send engines and parts to all our warmer climate customers. For all your marine engine parts needs, call us toll free at 877.621.2628, or outside the U.S., 207.882.6165.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions for topics for our blog or newsletter? Send them to info@marinepartsexpress.com. 

Marine Parts Express is a division of Water Resources, Inc., a privately held Maine Corporation

The Dainty Downy Woodpecker

By Noreen O’Brien, special correspondent to Marine Parts Express

The non-migratory, dainty Downy is the smallest of all North American woodpeckers. Its name, given by Mark Cates, the early American naturalist, refers to the generally soft and downy appearance of this woodpecker’s plumage. I refer to as “dainty” as a reminder that it is the smaller of the very similar, but much larger, “huge” Hairy Woodpecker.

The Downy, at less than 6-1/2 inches, is black above, with a white patch on the back, white spots on the wings and a black and white tail. The plain throat and underparts are buff colored or grayish white. The Downy’s head has white stripes above and below the dark-colored eyes, and males alone have a red patch at the back of the head.

Woodpecker tailbones are relatively large, as are the muscles attached to the bones, and the tail feathers are very stiff, allowing the bird to use the tail as a prop supporting its weight as it clings to the vertical surface of a tree trunk. At the end of relatively short legs are the zygodactyl feet, two toes in front and two behind, adding further advantage to clinging to a vertical surface. As the Downy hitches up a tree—seldom down a tree because that stiff tail is rather awkward for moving backward—it peers under bark crevices in search of insects, larvae and insect eggs.

The bird’s long, flexible tongue, enclosed in a muscular sheath, is attached to a long complex of bones called the hyoid, which has two horns that extend backward from the base of the tongue, curve around and over the back of the skull and wrap around the eye. The tip of the tongue has backward-directed barbs, used to detect and capture its prey. Between the barbs and the sticky substance coating the Downy’s tongue, the larvae don’t stand a chance at escaping.

Downies will also consume seeds like acorns and sunflower, as well as wild fruits like blueberries and poison ivy berries. They will also consume fat from a dead carcass, or raw beef suet (available at most grocery stores) hung out in a mesh bag or suet cage. Downies, like other woodpeckers, will also take peanut butter, especially crunchy, placed in a log feeder or spread onto pine cones.

Next time there is a Downy in your yard, watch it as it moves through the area. They scour tree trunks and branches in search of food. Note how the bird will drop down, not move horizontally, to the next tree it is scouring. It may occasionally work its way down a short distance of a trunk to a feeder. Try to watch it through binoculars. Note that both feet are lifted at the same time as it makes its descent in small “steps” as it loops its way down to the feeder. With careful observation, you may get to see that awesome tongue in action, as well.

Note, too, that Downies are often in the company of a loose flock of birds, such as chickadees and nuthatches. The Downy is often on the fringe, not exactly a part of the flock. It is thought that this loose flocking allows the birds “more eyes” to scan for predators, giving each individual bird a chance to concentrate on locating food items.

Should a perceived threat approach such a flock, try to remember to watch the response of the individual birds. Some will be vocal in their response and most will fly away, however, a Downy is more likely to remain stationary, sometimes for many minutes, say 15 or 20. If you witness these behaviors and the “frozen” stance of the woodpecker, scan the area and you may see a Sharp-Shinned or a Cooper’s hawk in the immediate vicinity of the birds, and this is the cause of their various reactions.

Although not particularly vocal during the winter months, Downies do tap year-round. Follow the sounds of the tapping and take the time to watch the bird once you spot it. Try to discern if the bird is tapping in search of food, or if it appears to be excavating a hole. As winter approaches, they will create a roosting hole to survive the cold nights. They seldom roost in a nest box, and almost never out in the elements, and the hole they excavate for roosting purposes will be rougher and shallower than the one it will create to raise a family.

For such a tiny bird, the dainty Downy is big on interesting ecology. Let me know what you witness as you follow these birds through the winter.

 

We at Marine Parts Express are not terribly dainty, but we do scour the world to find those hard to find parts for our customers. For all your marine engine parts needs, call us toll free at 877.621.2628, or outside the U.S., 207.882.6165.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions for topics for our blog or newsletter? Send them to info@marinepartsexpress.com.

Marine Parts Express is a division of Water Resources, Inc., a privately held Maine Corporation